This is the 15th recording on Naïve by one of the label’s best selling artists, the renowned French cellist Anne Gastinel. On this new CD she is accompanied by her regular piano musical partner Claire Désert in three essential works of the French chamber repertoire, César Franck’s much loved Sonata in A major in the popular transcription for cello and piano, and Sonatas by Debussy and Poulenc.

“… beyond praise and beyond any ordinary human competition. I have now done enough comparing with most of the other celebrated Chopin and Debussy exponents in our century to be sure that Moravec is Debussy’s greatest living interpreter.” ~Fanfare

While music lovers from all over the world have tried to recreate the ambience of French cafés by playing music from stars such as Piaf, Trénet and Chevalier, intellectuals, sociologists and policy makers in France have been embroiled in passionate debate about just what constitutes 'real' French music. In the late 1950s and 1960s a wave of Anglo-American rock 'n' roll and pop hit Europe and disrupted French popular music forever. The cherished sounds of the chanson were sidelined, fragmented or merged with pop styles and instrumentation. From this point on, French music and music culture have been splintered into cultural divides - pop culture vs high culture; mass culture vs 'authentic' popular culture; national culture vs Americanization. This book investigates the exciting and innovative segmentation of the French music scene and the debates it has spawned. From an analysis of the chanson as national myth, to pop, rap, techno and the State, this book is the first full-length study to make sense of the complexity behind the history of French popular music and its relation to 'authentic' cultural identity.

Since the end of the seventeenth century French composers have shown a particular skill and deftness of touch in writing for the flute. The instrument owes much of its prominence in French music of the twentieth century to the use made of it in orchestral colouring by composers such as Debussy and Ravel, as well as to a group of highly gifted players associated in one way or another with the Paris Conservatoire. They include the soloist on this recording, Patrick Gallois, a pupil of Jean-Pierre Rampal. This collection of works composed during the last sixty years ranges from Poulenc’s Sonata, marked by rhythmic vitality and a delicate vein of sentimentality, Messiaen’s Le merle noir, inspired by bird song, to Boulez’s Sonatine, which the composer himself has characterised as ‘organised delirium’.

This album featuring Carolyn Sampson and Ex Cathedra showcases works written for the foremost soprano of the French Baroque, Marie Fel. Voltaire called her his "adorable nightingale". Fel held an entire generation spellbound at the Paris Opera and at Louis XV's court during one of the most glorious periods of French music. She inspired some of Rameau's finest music and introduced a whole new level of virtuosity and expression into the French singing tradition. Her long, triumphant career is traced through this fascinating recording.

How Louisiana transplants and new players have generated a thriving music and dance scene far from the South Queen Ida. Danny Poullard. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank. Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie Records. These are names that are familiar to many fans of Cajun music and zydeco, and they have one other thing in common–longtime residence in the San Francisco Bay Area. They are all part of a vibrant scene of dancing and live Louisiana-French music that has evolved over several decades.

Produced by the Bru-Zane Foundation, whose mission is to aid in the rediscovery of unjustly neglected French music, 1780 to 1920. An album of Romantic French cantatas by Cherubini, Heand Boisselot in the company of an exceptional guide, mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes, Opera Fuoco and its conductor, David Stern. The French Cantata, a Baroque-era presence, was restored to favor in the 19th century as an alternative to the Italian stage, then generally perceived in France as being overly exuberant.